With that out of the way, let's discuss Google's constraints and
options with respect to how it can plan an Android product portfolio
for smartphones, tables and related devices.

The first issue is the most difficult one, and indeed the most painful
one to ask and answer, and that is: What are Motorola's capabilities
anymore?

Consider this: In the last six months, Google's other hardware
partners have accomplished this:

Asus made a Nexus 7 tablet starting at $199

Samsung made a Nexus 10 tablet starting at $399

LG made a Nexus 4 phone starting at $299

Acer made a Chromebook (laptop) starting at $199

It is hardly controversial to say all of these are better and
more cost-effective devices than anything Motorola has produced.

Even if Motorola had not been distracted by the pending (August 2011
to May 2012) merger with Google, could it have profitably engineered
and manufactured any of these four devices at these kinds of prices?

This type of capability breaks down into several dimensions:

1. Timing: How quickly can Motorola cough up a new design and
deliver the finished product?

Obviously these three things hang together, to some extent. You can
always have at least one out of these three. However, even two out of
three is not good enough -- this is the big boys' game now, so you
cannot tolerate falling behind on a single metric.

All of these prices for the newest Google gear listed above has been
class-leading, and widely lauded. It also appears that most of this
work has happened in Asia. Yes, it's true that I'm not saying that
all or most of the work needs to happen in Asia, but there is one
thing here that is a bit suspicious to me, and that's Chicago.

Motorola is primarily in Chicago. When it comes to producing a piece
of $199 cutting-edge portable computer that only months earlier used
to cost $399 or $499, Chicago is not what comes to mind. When I close
my mind and try to imagine Chicago in the 2013 mobile computing
economy, the only thing that comes to mind is a Trabant car from East
Germany, ca. 1977: Bureaucratic labor, high cost, moving slowly.

Acer, Asus, HTC, LG and Samsung move quickly. They can engineer a
device from scratch and bring it to market in four months. Google
bragged how Asus did the Nexus 7 in four months. Now they are talking
about Motorola taking at least 12 to 18 months to bring a device to
market. Getting Motorola into shape to compete against Asus or LG
seems as difficult as preparing a hobby tennis player for playing in
the Wimbledon finals against Bjorn Borg.